


The Greeks Probably Had Terrible Marriages

by harrycrewe



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-05
Updated: 2012-03-05
Packaged: 2017-11-01 04:01:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/351734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harrycrewe/pseuds/harrycrewe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short fill for a the following kinkmeme prompt:<br/>http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/13188.html?thread=73458052#t73458052</p><p>The prompt is necessary to understanding the story.</p><p>"Here's the typical pattern: first lust, then infatuation, then consummation, then jealously or boredom. There's only anxiety and distress in this endlessly repeated story, except for the sex itself, and Epicurus regarded sex as an unnecessary pleasure, which never did anybody any real good--count yourself lucky if it does you no harm! There is nothing intrinsically wrong with casual sex, but much more important than either love or sex is friendship..."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Greeks Probably Had Terrible Marriages

Here’s how it goes for Sherlock: first boredom, because everything is boring, everyone is boring, and the first time he meets John all he thinks is, dull, dull, dull. John’s a bland-faced little man with a button nose, his neuroses and idiosyncrasies, such as they are, written as clearly in the frayed cuffs of his jacket, the worn edges of his cell phone, and the faint lines at the edges of his eyes, as if they were written across his forehead in black ink. And Sherlock regrets the necessity of sharing a flat with him, just as one might regret a functional but unattractive piece of furniture in the otherwise ideal Baker Street flat.

 

Jealousy is the first sign that something has changed. Where is John? Who is John talking to? Usually the answers to these questions are trivial, easily deduced. Pointless, in fact. Yet Sherlock finds himself asking them, and stowing the solutions to each of these little puzzles away, neatly in a little compartment marked “John” in the back of his mind. He resolves to delete them but never does.

It is human nature, after all, to feel an emotional attachment towards those you spend time, or share living space with. Sherlock feels a small warmth in his chest when he realizes that he has succumbed to this illogical tendency: human social behavior has rarely come naturally to him, he is pleased in his own cleverness in having for once behaved, without even trying, as other humans do.

 

Consummation occurs after a windy, chilly night, when they walk back towards the flat in silence, and Sherlock hears John’s gait become irregular, his psychosomatic limp kicking in as the adrenaline wanes in his system. The murderer they captured earlier that evening had been clever: one of the best Sherlock had come across since M. 

Sherlock rarely gets hard, except sometimes he is hard when he wakes up in the morning. He is disinterested in masturbation and sex. However, on rare occasions – and he is not embarrassed to say so, it is again a perfectly normal human response - on these rare occasions when he has chased down a criminal and stood down the end of a gun – he finds it exciting.

He knows that John does too: John finds nothing more arousing than danger. And John is still aroused, although that is waning with the adrenaline.

It is so wonderful, that moment when the pieces fall into place. The moment when he turns and backs John against a wall is as glorious as the moments in which his mind was racing as fast as his feet to get ahead of the man, the murderer, and the look on his face when he realized he’d been outwitted. When he kisses John and John shivers, and pushes his leg up between Sherlock’s and they rut against each other, Sherlock is hard, harder than he’s been in years.

 

Then the body, after all, adapts to new stimuli. Given a steady input of sex, it only demands more, until sometimes just the flash of a strip of pale white skin between John’s jumper and the back of his trousers can put Sherlock into a state where nothing productive can be achieved until immediate needs are attended too. And John is the same, it appears, although he’s several years older that Sherlock, and, one would have assumed, of more modest appetites generally. They fuck everywhere: in John’s bed in the mornings, until the sheets are a tangle on the floor beside them, and in Sherlock’s room, although John protests that it is musty and uncomfortable. Sometimes they never make it out of the living room, or the kitchen, or the alley hidden from view by a parked police van. Sherlock catalogues these experiences away: he has been in the habit of ignoring his body, regarding it as merely transport, but sex can transport him as well as cocaine. It is remarkable to realize there is a whole new kind of knowing that he had unaccountably overlooked for so long.

 

Lust is the regard for a body, rather than a person: the feeling of looking at someone and wanting, not because you are interested in who they are, but merely because you desire to possess what they have. In the same way, Sherlock has passed most of his intellectual life: he desires to know everything that is important, and nothing that is not: his lust has been for secrets, for intrigue, and for an escape from boredom.

Sherlock and John do not follow the typical pattern. They move from boredom to consummation, to infatuation and then to lust, and when lust turns to embers banked by age, they are left somewhere different than they were before: that is to say, Sherlock has learned to appreciate other human beings, and John has learnt to live again. They might have achieved this final equilibrium without the sex (but as Epicurus said, it didn’t hurt, either).


End file.
